So guys start building your teams for the game soon. Here are few important pointers from the Cricinfo Fantasy Cricket game site itself regarding the Champions League game.

Some points to note

Transfers: Unlimited transfers are allowed only until 14:30 GMT on Oct 8, 2009. Thereafter, you have got 20 transfers available till the group matches get over on Oct 20, 2009. This will be followed by a period of ‘unlimited transfers’ till the first semi-final starts at 14:30 GMT on Oct 21, 2009. For a detailed look at the match and cut-off timings, please refer to the matches covered page.

Cut-off timelines for transfers: Teams (including the Trump Player) are ‘locked’ at the cut-off time for every match. Any changes made to your team after the cut-off time come into effect only from the next cut-off onwards.

Score Updates: Scores will be updated shortly after the end of every day’s play. Next Match Scheduled at: 08-Oct-2009 14:30 GMT Update Your Team Latest by: 08-Oct-2009 14:30 GMT

How to Change Team

Number of team changes allowed for this fantasy game is as per the schedule below:

This is the most exciting game of the two as you need to pick the right players to play the tournament. You can create a maximum of two teams in this game. Do make sure you have both the teams ready come match day on the 22nd because that gives you some insurance against one of your teams not doing well. In that case, you can always fall back upon your second team. The key is to pick two different teams with different combination so as to maximize your chances of success. There are few rules regarding transfers for this game:

Unlimited transfers are allowed only until 12:30 GMT on Sep 22, 2009. Thereafter, you have got 12 transfers available till the group matches get over on Sep 30, 2009. This will be followed by a period of ‘unlimited transfers’ till the first semi-final that starts at 12:30 GMT on Oct 2, 2009. Thereafter there would be 4 transfers allowed for the Semi-finals and Final.

I have created a league named “Velvet Flair Champions Trophy” for this very game. Do join me and rest of the folks to lock horns amongst ourselves and see who has got the best cricket brain to match this contest. In order to join join my League on Cricinfo Fantasy Cricket for the ICC Champions Trophy 2009 you need to use this LPIN:

As many of you might already know, the T20 World cup is just a day away from kick off as tomorrow, June the 5th, is the day when England lock horns with the Netherlands for the curtain raiser of the Twenty20 world cup 2009. As has been blogged previously by me, Cricinfo, as with every cricket tournament being staged at the international stage, is arranging their Fantasy Cricket competition for the same by the name International 20-20. Today I want to provide few tips for those folks out there striving for participating and doing well in the game. I am not an expert with the fantasy game but I have some experience with their earlier fantasy game with a degree of success like IPL et al. My team named ‘May Flower’, by the codename ‘Velvet Flair’, ranked as high as 7th in the world but I came plumetting down to earth at the closing stages of the IPL. But that’s another story! Let’s get down to bullet points now 🙂 Yep, I love bullet points:

1. Don’t be emotional while building your team i.e. don’t hoard your team with players from the country you support instead approach it a degree with impartiality and pure cricketing point of view.

2. Don’t hoard a team of superstars because then you would invariably have to sacrifice the balance of your team for you will then need to take cheap/non-performing players in your team.

3. Do take batsmen who are likely to come up at the top of the order and hence give you good points in return by scoring runs at the top of the order. Otherwise, you run the risk that your batsmen won’t get to bat in every game.

4. Do take batsmen who might score few e.g. 20/30 but score them in quick-time i.e. having a strike rate close to 200 because that way you would get bonus points. On the contrary, if you take regular/proper/orthodox batsmen in your team, they might end up scoring at run a ball or lower strike rate in which case you will get negative points.

5. Do try to think deeply about the formation of your side. For instance, one might go for having 3 all-rounders and 2 bowlers instead of having 4 bowlers and 2 all-rounders because in a short game like T20 bowlers are likely to go for runs and in the process will reap you ‘negative’ dividends :). The reverse is also true i.e. your batters might get out for a few runs and your bowlers might get lot of wickets. Hence the point is to form a team according to the kind of personnel you have i.e if you have good bowlers in your side go for 4 bowler strategy whereas if you are planning to take good all-rounders go for 4 all-rounders and 2 bowler strategy.

6. Do give the total substitution scenario a great thought because a tournament so short as this, the entire duration of which being only 15 days, will require you to handle your substitutions judiciously. As you might know, there would be 40 substitutions allowed for the entire length of the tournament. Hence, it is imperative that you regularly substitute players wisely to gain the most points for the day. For instance, one might want to pack his/her team with players from England for the opening day so as to maximize the chance of gaining most points and then substitute some non-performing players from that game with Australian/Indian/Bangladeshi/West Indian/New Zealanders as those teams are scheduled to play on the 6th of June, 2009.

Please have a look at this document to gauze the kind of long term planning that one can make in such a tournament with so many substitutions allowed duriong the course of it. Mind you the substitutions allowed until the start of the game tomorrow is ‘unlimited’. Hence, if you haven’t created a team yet do so right now. Otherwise, you won’t get the ‘unlimited transfer benefit’ after tomorrow. I have also changed the ‘Super Eights’ schedule a bit by guessing who are likely to be in the ‘Super Eights’ and are likely to be placed in which group. Please note that before every game, I have written “In = Player1 (Country1), Out = Player2 (Country2)”. That means, I am planning to substitute Player2 with Player1 before the game. So you get the idea, right? In the document, I am just trying to give you a sense of planning for the tournament. The antipated ‘Super Eights’ schedule might get screwed up but the point is you need to swap in and out players to get maximum points for a given day.

Folks, join my League on Cricinfo Fantasy Cricket for T20 World Cup 2009 with this LPIN:

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Cricinfo Fantasy Cricket for “International 20-20” tournament aka T20 World Cup is commencing on the 5th of June, 2009. It’s a pretty simple game which requires you to create a cricket team comprising of 11 players and then wait for the match to commence. After every match you are given out points based on the performance of your cricketers (wickets taken, catches taken, runs scored, sixes scored, maidens bowled, Man-of-the-match award winner etc. ). So, all you need to do is create a team with good bunch of players who are likely to give you good points at the end of every match. That’s it! So, please take a little time to register yourself on their site first and then just create your team wisely. Mind you, you can have substitutes as well but for the game rules, please read the game pages carefully. Here you go, I am really looking forward to locking horns with you guys there to see who has the shrewdest cricketing mind amongst us.

To sum things up, just register and then go to the Fantasy home page from where you will select the” Join League” menu option from the left and use the LPIN provided at the top to join in my league. That’s it, you are done! Let’s beat the world!

Last night I was watching the Twenty20 IPL cricket match between Kolkata Knight Riders & Mumbai Indians and couple of strokes from Sachin Tendulkar really captured my imagination. I have been following cricket since I was a 10-year-old kid and never have I seen anything on a cricket ground like what Sachin did to the last ball of the eighth over from Chris Gayle. He had pre-meditated on that ball to scoop it over the keeper or the 1st slip. But Gayle being Gayle bowled it full & wide outside off stump and then came the mastery of the batting magician. He changed his stroke mid way and improvised to ‘reverse flick’ the ball past the short third man fielder much like a hockey player would yield his stick while maneuvering to outsmart the goal-keeper. Well, it’s more of a half scoop, half reverse flick shot in my book but couple of things stood out in that shot. Firstly, it’s his ability to adapt to the shot midway like he has done so many a times in his career; as we are used to hear that the great batsman, as he is, possesses at least two strokes for every shot in the book. Secondly, it’s the subtle reverse-cocking of his wrists to place the ball where he did. We all know how the wrist cocks when a right handed batsman flicks on the on-side but this was the exact opposite of that and hence the coining of this term ‘reverse flicking’. Well, I am not someone for neologism but there is so much buzz these days about shots like ‘Switch Hit’ that I couldn’t resist mentioning so.

Now on to the second shot which came on the third ball of the fifth over from Ishant Sharma. Ishant bowled a fast-ish bouncer over the over stump line and it was rising. Sachin simply ‘swiveled hooked’ it for six over mid wicket à la Calypso batsmen. His left leg was still in the air when the ball landed on the gallery for a maximum. Anyone having some idea about batsmanship, would tell you that the most difficult bouncer to hook is the one that has to be fetched from outside the off-stump.

These two strokes were neuro-transmitted onto my synapses indelibly and shall remain etched into my neurons and as well as my progeny’s if that is how it is supposed to work 🙂

So much have been said and written about the Twenty20 cricket being a young man’s game. While most of it is true, one would be foolish to write off class acts like Sachin. Before that game began Sachin’s T20 batting average stood at exactly 40 while his strike rate was around 112. While averages are not a true reflection of a batsman’s calibre in this format of the game, strike rates are a reflection of his ability to master this form of the game. After this game, his strike rate will be better (131.65) for it because of his 45 ball 68 at a strike rate of 151.11. And in my most humble opinion, in T20 great players have a strike rate of 150 & over. While I am sure Sachin will have his strike rate settled around there after he has played a reasonable amount of T20 games (he only played 15), the most important facet of this discussion is that ‘age is no barrier’ in cricket. I always thought Sachin is good enough to take India to an ODI World Cup title in 2011 on the sub-continent and I still hold onto that belief ever so strongly. More than anything, last night he has managed to discard off the few doubters in proving he ‘belongs here’ as well. That the reflexes are still holding sway and that the 16 year old kid of 1989 is not worse but better for it because of age. That’s the value of his class. That’s the value of his greatness.